Keeping Her Pride (Ladies of the Pack Book 1)

by Lauren Esker

  Her family had been both a prison and a haven. They'd messed her up in ways she was only beginning to understand. But they had also been there for her. As a member of the Fallon pride, she had always known who she was.

  Who was Debi Fallon without the pride?

  "You look like you're falling asleep there," Nia said softly. Debi opened her eyes to see Nia sitting crosslegged on the bathroom floor, looking up at her with a gentle smile.

  Debi cleared her throat. "Just thinking about food. I need calories for healing, you know."

  If she'd had to, Debi could've forced her sore feet into her heeled shoes and gone down to the hotel restaurant, but Nia suggested ordering room service and she was more than happy to go along with it. The options were limited and they had to tack on a huge tip—they were in a chain hotel in Casper, Wyoming, after all—but she was able to get a double-decker cheeseburger and an enormous slice of chocolate cheesecake.

  "Wow," Nia said when the food was delivered.

  "This is my official fuck-you to dieting," Debi declared, cutting a piece of the cheesecake with her fork. Whoever said you couldn't have dessert first was a total killjoy, and she was done playing by the rules.

  "You're dieting?"

  "Not anymore. Screw it. I'm never losing weight because someone wants me to lose weight again. I like the way I look." As she said it, she realized it was true. "I've never not liked the way I look, except when someone was telling me I looked bad. Like my big brother. Fuck him, he's dead anyway. Eat the cheesecake, is what I say."

  Nia held up her fist. Debi stared at it for a minute before realizing she was supposed to bump it with her own, so she did.

  "You are an inspiration," Nia declared, reaching for the room phone.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Ordering cheesecake, because that looks too good and I don't want to deprive you of any of yours. And I think we need a bottle of wine to go with it."

  "What kind of wine goes with cheesecake and burgers?"

  They settled on red, on the general principle that red wine goes with steak and burgers = beef. As Nia poured them two glasses of merlot, she remarked, "So, can I ask you a personal question?"

  "Has anything ever stopped you?" Debi asked wryly. Having demolished the cheesecake, she accepted a glass of wine and switched her attention to the juicy-looking burger.

  "Right, having gotten that out of the way, what really happened with Fletcher?"

  Debi sighed, and over their cheeseburgers and a refill on the wine, she told Nia about the request she'd made, and how he'd reacted.

  "Wow. Cold. What did I say I'd do, hit him in the face with a dead trout? Yeah. If you can find me a trout, one trout-smack coming up."

  Debi smiled. "You know, now that I've had time to think about it ... he was a jerk, but I wasn't much better. I can see where he's coming from. He's terrified of losing his daughter and his company. I don't think he meant to imply that he's more worried about his reputation than about me. It just came out that way."

  "Still, you need somebody who's going to put you first. Or at least not put you last." Nia reached for the wine bottle to top off their glasses from its fast-dwindling contents.

  "Life's complicated. I hope he's stewing in a nice marinade of regret right now, but at the same time, he's always going to make his daughter a priority, and I don't want it any other way. I never want him to have to choose between his daughter and me. That's ridiculous. I have no intention of coming between them, ever. You should see them together, Nia. He's a great dad. His little girl is a lucky kid."

  Nia stabbed her finger at Debi. "There! That's the look."

  "What look?"

  "The look you had when you first told me about him. You're glowing."

  "I'm what?"

  "Glowing. You have a glow."

  "I do not!" Debi protested. "If there is any glowing going on over here, it's the wine."

  "If you miss him that much—"

  "I never said I missed him!"

  "The glow doesn't lie," Nia said smugly.

  "There is no glow. You've had too much to drink. Give me that wine bottle."

  Nia relinquished the bottle, giggling. "What's that Latin saying? Vino in veritas?"

  "In vino veritas. 'Truth in wine.' I think you've got too much vino over there and not enough veritas. What about the trout? You were going to hit him with a trout for me. Some friend you are."

  "The trout offer is still on the table. But," Nia said, sobering up somewhat, "you shouldn't let pride get in the way of something you really want."

  "Pride's what got me into this mess," Debi snorted.

  In both senses of the word.

  Anyway, Nia was completely off base. Debi didn't want Fletcher there. Didn't miss him at all, really.

  She didn't miss Fletcher's hands on her body, didn't miss the heat in his eyes when he looked at her—his warmth in bed beside her—the way he listened to her when she talked, really listened, not like he was talking to baby sister Debi at the bottom of the pride, but like she was a smart person, a person worth listening to ...

  Debi ran her hands through her hair as if she could brush Fletcher away just as easily. "Okay, no more talking about men. Any men. We're flying back tomorrow afternoon, right? What else do we want to see in Wyoming?"

  The Fletcher problem would still be waiting for her back in Seattle, no matter what she did here. She just needed to let it go between now and then, and hope some kind of solution presented itself.

  Chapter Fourteen

  They landed in Seattle in a gray, rainy dusk. Although Debi was prepared for the unpleasant necessity of dealing with public transportation in the rain—her feet had healed completely by this point—Nia had her car there, and insisted on driving her home.

  "You've been awfully quiet ever since we got on the plane," Nia remarked as they drove through stop-and-go traffic in the hissing rain. "It's being back here, isn't it? Making you think about Fletcher? Or is it your case with the SCB?"

  "Maybe a little of both."

  "You'll find someone to testify for you. I'll help. Maybe I can talk to your boss, or find someone at work who can vouch for you."

  "That'd be nice," Debi said with no particular enthusiasm.

  They were stopped at a traffic light, and Nia reached over to clasp her hand for a moment. Debi looked down at it in surprise.

  "Something will come up," Nia promised. "Sometimes you just have to look at the whole situation from different angles, until things shake loose and you find out that you've been overlooking the obvious this whole time."

  "Thanks, Pollyanna."

  "I mean, most of the examples I can think of come from my casework, so obviously I can't talk about them," Nia rambled on as she pulled away from the stoplight. "But I think it's a pretty good metaphor for life. You can get so dead set on what looks like the obvious solution to the puzzle, like say, if there's one suspect you really want to be guilty, and then you completely overlook the real culprit because you're so determined to pin the case on that one person, you can't see the forest for the trees." She frowned and pursed her lips. "Okay, maybe that's kind of a terrible metaphor, actually. Also a very mixed one."

  You completely overlook the real culprit because you're so determined to pin the case on that one person.

  Overlooking the obvious.

  And suddenly, the pieces fell together. Debi had always been good at seeing patterns, and now she realized there had been a pattern right in front of her the whole time that she hadn't seen at all.

  She and Fletcher had both assumed the person who had been using his company to launder money was Chloe. She had opportunity, she had mob connections through her family ...

  But then there was the person who, from what Debi had been able to see, did most of the actual purchasing and receiving.

  Janice.

  Janice ... whose son was ill, who had mounting medical bills, who could really use some extra money ... like, say, the sort of extra money that might
come from doing favors for the mob.

  "Shit," Debi whispered.

  "What's that?"

  "Nothing, just—you're right. It's easy to overlook obvious things when you get too attached to one solution."

  "Yeah, see? There is an answer out there for you, to the ankle monitor problem and the Fletcher problem too."

  "Mmmm."

  Debi was so lost in her thoughts she barely noticed when they pulled up and stopped in front of her apartment building, until she was engulfed in a sudden, unexpected hug from Nia. "Erk," was all she could manage to say.

  "Thanks for giving me an excuse to get out of the city for a little while," Nia said into her hair. "And away from paperwork. I'm sorry it was such a serious thing, with your family and all, but you're a good travel buddy."

  This was definitely not how Debi would have described herself, especially on this particular trip. All the traveling she'd done had been with her siblings, usually to the Caribbean or Mexico to escape Seattle's dreary winters. They'd stayed in luxury resorts. Roger and Mara, as the eldest siblings, had called the shots, deciding where they would go and when. It had always been fun; she'd gotten to swim at white-sand beaches and lounge around in a bathing suit drinking fruity tropical drinks. Sometimes they went to the family's island up along the Canadian coast, where they could shift and roam as lions, but after Roger and the rest of the pride started having their hunting games there, Debi didn't like going back there anymore. When she wanted to shift, she'd drive up into the Cascades or over to the Olympic Peninsula.

  This trip hadn't been anything special for her, and as far as she was concerned, she'd been a wet blanket most of the time. But she was surprised to discover that after the prison visit, she'd actually acquired some good memories of the trip, all because of Nia.

  "You're a good travel buddy too," Debi tried, and apparently that was the right thing, because Nia beamed at her.

  "Call me and tell me how it goes with Fletcher."

  "I will," Debi sighed, because she had a feeling Nia was going to pester her about it until getting an answer.

  "It'll be okay. Really, it will. If things don't work out with Fletcher, there are other fish in the sea."

  "Because dating a fish is definitely on my to-do list."

  "Well, if it doesn't work out, you can always use the fish to smack him with."

  "What is it with you and hitting people with fish? Is this a thing in your family?"

  "It's something my mother used to say. I dunno if it's a saying from the old country or something she picked up from TV or what. She used to threaten to hit me and my sisters with a fish if we misbehaved."

  Debi stared at her, then shook her head. "I regret asking."

  Nia drove away in the rain and Debi let herself into her apartment, finding it just as she'd left it: messy, small, and dark. For once, she had too much on her mind to feel sorry for herself. She dropped her suitcase on the bed and debated herself about calling Fletcher to run her Janice theory past him.

  Her stomach quivered at the thought, an odd mix of trepidation and eagerness.

  But what if I'm wrong?

  What if he doesn't want to talk to me?

  What if he believes me and I get Janice arrested and then it turns out she's innocent? Then Fletcher will think I'm an idiot and I will have ruined an innocent woman's life.

  Amid the clutter on the bedside table, the key to Fletcher's office gleamed at her.

  She'd completely forgotten she had it. She needed to give it back to him. Or ...

  Debi picked it up and turned it over in her fingers.

  She could go down to Fletcher's office herself and look for evidence before she tried pitching the idea to him directly. She and Fletcher had already been over the office paperwork in detail, but they'd been trying to tie Chloe to it, not Janice. And one place Debi hadn't looked was in Janice's desk. There might be something incriminating there.

  She took a fortifying breath and called a cab.

  ***

  The rain had stopped when the cab let her out in front of Fletcher's office building, but the air had the heavy wet feeling that meant more rain was probably on the way.

  Before she let herself in, Debi walked up and down the block, checking the windows of the building. And she was glad she did. There was still a light on in Fletcher's office window.

  He's right up there.

  I could go up and talk to him.

  On the far side of the street, she sheltered from a renewed drizzle under the portico of a bank and fought a silent internal battle until the light went out. A few minutes later, Fletcher emerged from his building's door.

  He was wearing a dark coat with its collar turned up and carrying an umbrella, but she still knew him instantly. Her whole body yearned toward him like a flower reaching for the sun.

  She could just walk across the street and tell him ...

  Fletcher paused just outside the building and looked around. There was no way he should have known she was watching him, and yet he seemed to sense it. He turned his head, looked searchingly up the street.

  Debi lowered her gaze and tilted her umbrella so it would block his view. When she dared risk a peek, Fletcher was walking briskly up the street, visible only as a bobbing dark-colored umbrella that was quickly lost to view.

  She swallowed and closed her eyes, feeling suddenly on the verge of tears. When the urge went away, she crossed the street and entered Fletcher's building.

  The other offices were closed and dark, the building abandoned by its daytime occupants. The distant drone of a vacuum cleaner letting her know the custodial staff were around somewhere. On Fletcher's floor, Debi moved with leonine stealth and pressed her ear to the door of Sperlin-Briggs's offices. Hearing nothing from within, she let herself in.

  The outer office hadn't changed much in the few days since she'd last been inside, although it was emptier; it looked like Chloe, or someone, had taken a load of boxes away, leaving far less clutter and a forlorn, deserted feeling.

  Last week Debi had mainly seen Janice at the receptionist's desk, since the office manager was wearing multiple hats during the company's staff shortage, so she started there. The desk contained the usual array of office supplies, lunch receipts, and odd items like a stray tampon and a pack of gum. Debi wasn't sure precisely what she was looking for (a set of account books neatly labeled FAKE and REAL would be too much to hope for), but nothing seemed even remotely out of place or incriminating. She hadn't thought to bring her reading glasses, and their lack slowed her down as she was forced to hold documents out at arm's length to comfortably read them.

  The computer was shut down. Debi booted it to a password prompt. The same password that worked on the accounting computer worked here, but the computer offered no more enlightenment than the desk. Documents cluttered the computer desktop; none of them seemed to be anything other than downloaded attachments, half-finished letters to clients, and other detritus of a typical workday.

  There was no reason to believe anyone would come back before morning, but Debi was still jumpy. The sound of the elevator made her go tense until it stopped, with a ding, on some other floor.

  There was no one else here except the custodial staff; she heard the distant drone of the vacuum cleaner go off and start up again. She wasn't sure why she was so convinced that she wasn't alone.

  ***

  Fletcher wasn't sure what had made him look back at the exact right moment. He didn't believe in things like a sixth sense or destiny, but it did seem as if something had made him turn his head at just the right instant, in time to see a quick flash of blonde hair as Debi, or someone who looked very much like her, ran across the street in front of his office building.

  It couldn't possibly have been her. Why would she be here? And more to the point, why would she be here after hours, at a time when she had no reasonable expectation that he'd be in his office?

  What in the world makes you think she's here to see you, nitwit?

  H
e looked back again. The sidewalk was empty, cloaked in dusk and rain.

  It was someone else. Had to be. Debi wasn't the only tall blonde woman in Seattle. Fletcher walked on, trying to convince himself.

  But it wasn't working. Debi was distinctive, that was the problem. Whoever that woman had been, she had Debi's speed and grace, Debi's gazelle-like, gliding stride, Debi's alertness and her proud way of carrying her head—

  It had been Debi. Damn it.

  He turned around and walked back up the street, slowly at first, then with longer steps until he was almost jogging, the umbrella cocked over his shoulder.

  By the time he reached the door of his building, he had come close to convincing himself, again, that he was wrong. Rather than going inside, he walked around the block, looking up at the windows of the offices on his floor. At first he thought there was nothing to be seen. The rest of the building was a patchwork of windows, some lit, most dark. All the windows on Sperlin-Briggs's floor were dark—

  —no. Wait. A light had just blinked on.

  It wasn't one of the offices with windows, which were mainly his office, Chloe's office, and a couple of the conference rooms. The light was reflecting from somewhere deeper within the Sperlin-Briggs office complex.

  There might be a lot of tall blonde women in Seattle other than Debi, but Fletcher doubted if there were very many who had business after hours in his office. And she still had the office key he'd given her, didn't she?

  Debi was in his offices. And she must have waited until he left to go in. She'd been watching from across the street.

  "What the hell, Debi," Fletcher muttered, walking briskly back up the street. He let himself into the building's still-unlocked lobby, his stomach a tight ball of anticipation and nervousness and elation.

  Debi wasn't gone. She hadn't walked out of his life forever. At least, she hadn't yet.